Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of counter-stereotypes cognitive training on adolescents’ aging stereotypes and to further investigate the best training method to intervene in aging stereotypes by comparing the effect of single and multiple intervention training methods on aging stereotypes and their retention effects. Three experiments examined the different intervention outcomes of different counter-stereotypes cognitive training on adolescent aging stereotypes. The study used a randomized block group experimental design and recruited a total of 183 middle school students for testing. Experiment 1 verified the effect of counter-stereotypes cognitive training by taking a single training task (evaluative conditioning technique), randomly assigning subjects to different conditions (training task or unrelated drawing task), and administering a follow-up test 24h after the posttest. Experiment 2a compared the effects of multiple versus single cognitive training, where we took multiple (adding the counter-stereotypes situational storytelling method) versus single training tasks and administered a follow-up test 72h after the posttest. Experiment 2b increased the number of training sessions based on Experiment 2a, with a second intervention training 72h after the end of the posttest and a follow-up test 72h after the second training. Experimental results suggest that evaluative conditioning techniques are effective in weakening subjects’ aging stereotypes, but are less effective in maintaining them. Compared to a single training task, multi-tasking is more effective and the effects of the intervention are maintained for up to a week by increasing the number of training sessions.
Highlights
As the global older adult population continues to grow, population aging will be one of the major issues we face in this century (Cheng and Heller, 2010)
Three experiments were conducted to verify whether counter-stereotypes cognitive intervention training could effectively weaken adolescents’ aging stereotypes and whether the training effects could be maintained for a longer period by increasing the number of intervention training tasks and the number of training sessions
Such results suggest that adolescents are better than adults in terms of cognitive plasticity, it is difficult to effectively promote the maintenance of intervention training effects after only a simple and limited number of training sessions, and further improvements should be made in the intervention training methods and the number of intervention training sessions
Summary
As the global older adult population continues to grow, population aging will be one of the major issues we face in this century (Cheng and Heller, 2010). Respect for older adults is a traditional Chinese virtue, which has led society to give them some special care, but the potential aging stereotype that comes with this special care pushes them to the margins of society and has a negative impact on their bodies and minds. Negative aging stereotypes as a social cognitive factor have a negative impact on older adults that cannot be ignored. Research has found that aging stereotypes have a significant impact on people’s physiology, cognition, behavior, and daily life (He et al, 2013; Bae et al, 2018; Chiviacowsky et al, 2018; Li and Xu, 2018). Aging stereotypes can affect individuals’ physiological functions, such as blood pressure, hearing (Levy et al, 2000a, 2009), cognitive functions such as memory performance and judgment (Wheeler and Petty, 2001; O’Brien and Hummert, 2006; Radvansky et al, 2010), and everyday habits such as writing and reading, and consumption behavior (Bargh et al, 1996; Levy et al, 2000a; Bae et al, 2018)
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